Thursday, August 3, 2017

Controversial newsletter continues to be distributed in GTA

Despite an order by the federal government last year to Canada Post to stop delivering the controversial newsletter called Your Ward News, as well as charges laid against the paper’s publishers in June, copies of the hateful tabloid are still finding their way to suburban homes.

Debbie Speyer, a resident of Thornhill, a Toronto suburb with a large Jewish population, said she was “shocked” to find a copy of the Sumer 2017 issue of Your Ward News stuffed in her mailbox on her porch, calling it a “disgusting, racist tract.”

“I found it in my mailbox and immediately recognized the name of the paper,” Speyer said.

“Frankly, I turned the pages just enough to see some really disgusting language and couldn’t actually bear to read the thing.”

In 2016, following a formal complaint filed by lawyer Richard Warman with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Judy Foote, the Minister of Public Services who is currently on a leave of absence, issued an interim prohibitory order for Canada Post to stop delivering the quarterly publication, which frequently contains racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, Holocaust denying, Nazi-glorifying content in its pages.

Your Ward News publishers appealed the order in April and a three-person Board of Review was convened to determine if the minister had reasonable grounds to believe the publishers were committing an offence. The review is still ongoing. (more...)